Quite challenging reading.
But do it for your own good.
Passage A
Paragraph 1
The mosquito has long, filament-thin legs and dappled wings; she is of the genus Anopheles, the only insect capable of harbouring the human malaria parasite. She is definitely a she: Male mosquitoes have no interest in blood, while females depend on protein-rich haemoglobin to nourish their eggs. A mosquito's proboscis appears spike-solid, but it is actually a sheath of separate tools - cutting blades and a feeding tube powered by two tiny pumps. It begins with a bite, a painless bite. The mosquito comes in the night, alights on an exposed patch of flesh, and assumes the hunched, head-lowered posture of a sprinter in the starting blocks. Then she plunges her stiletto mouthparts into the skin. She drills through the epidermis, then through a thin layer of fat, then into the network of blood-filled micro-capillaries. She starts to drink.
From Paragraph 1
1. How do we know that all Anopheles mosquitoes are females? [1m]
2. Quote a word that has the same meaning as "sting". [1m]
3. Why is it ironic that the author compares a mosquito about to sting its prey to that of a sprinter starting his race? [2m]
Paragraph 2
To inhibit the blood from coagulating, the mosquito oils the the bite area with a spray of saliva. This is how it happens. Carried in the mosquito's salivary glands - and entering the body with the lubricating squirt - are minute, wormlike creatures. These are the one-celled malaria parasites, known as plasmodia. Fifty thousand of them could swim in a pool the size of the full-stop at the end of this sentence. Typically, a couple of dozen slip into the bloodstream. But it takes just one. A single plasmodium is enough to kill a person.
Paragraph 3
The parasites remain in the bloodstream for only a few minutes. They ride the flume of the circulatory system to the liver. There they stop. Each plasmodium burrows into a different liver cell. Almost certainly, the person who has been bitten harldy stirs from sleep. For the next week or two, there is no overt sign that something in the body has just gone horribly wrong.
Paragraph 4
From the mosquito's salivary glands to the host's liver cell: a quiet trip. Everything seems fine. Even the liver itself, that reddish sack of blood-filtering cells, shows no sign of trouble. It is only in those few rooms whose locks have been picked by falciparum where all is pandemonium. Inside these cells, the malaria parasites eat and multiply. They do this nonstop for about a week, until the cell's original contents have been entirely digested and it is bulging with parasites like a soup can gone bad. Each falciparum that entered the body has now replicated itself 40,000 times.
From Paragraph 4
4. How long is the incubation period of malaria? [1m]
Paragraph 5
The cells explode. A riot of parasites is set loose in the bloodstream. Within thirty seconds, though, the parasites have again entered the safe houses of cells - this time, each has drilled into a red blood cell, flowing thourgh the circulatory system. Over the next two days, the parasites continue to devour and proliferate stealthily. After they have consumed the invaded cells, they burst out again, and once more there is bedlam in the blood.
Paragraph 6
For the first time, the body realises it has been ambushed. Headache and muscle pains are a sign that the immune system has been triggered. But if this is the victim's first bout of malaria, the immune response is mostly ineffective. The alarm has sounded, but the thieves are already under the bed. The parasites swiftly invade a new set of blood cells, and the sequence of reproduction and release continues.
Paragraph 7
Now the internal temperature begins to rise as the body attempts to cook away the invaders. Shivering sets in - muscle vibrations generate warmth. This is followed by severe fever, then drenching sweat. Cold, hot, wet; the symptoms are a ahllmark of the disease. But the parasites' exponential growth continues, and after a few more cycles there are billions of them tumbling about the blood.
From paragraph 7
5. Explain in your own words, what the author means by the phrase, "the thieves are already under the bed"? [2m]
Paragraph 8
By this point, the fever has reached maximum intensity. The body is practically boiling itself to death - anything to halt the attack - but to no avail. The parasites can even commandeer blood cells to help aid their survival. In some cases of falciparum, infected cells sprout Velcro-like knobs on their surfaces, and as these cells pass through the capillaries of the brain, they latch to the sides. The adhesion keeps them from washing into the spleen, which cleans the blood by shredding damaged cells. Somehow - no one is quite sure how - the adhesion also causes the brain to swell. The infection has turned into cerebral malaria, the most feared manifestation of the disease.
Paragraph 9
This is when the body starts to break down. The parasites have destroyed so many oxygen-carrying red cells that too few are left to sustain vital functions. The lungs fight for breath, and the heart struggles to pump. The blood acidifies. Brain cells die. The child struggles and convulses and finally falls into a coma.
Passage B
Paragraph 1
Doctors have long suspected that the malaria problem was getting worse, but the most searing proof has come to light in just the past year. Researchers believe the average number of cases of malaria per year in Africa has quadrupled since the 1980s. A study in the journal Lancet last June reported that the death rate due to malaria has at least doubled among children in eastern and southern Africa; some rural areas have seen a heartbreaking 11-fold jump in mortality. "The death rates from malaria are as high as those from HIV," says Dr. Christa Hook, co-ordinator of the malaria working group for Doctors Without Borders. "In many ways, it's a kind of silent Holocaust."
From Paragraph 1
6. What is the author's purpose of comparing malaria to HIV? [2m]
7. What type of organisation do you think "Doctors Without Borders" refers to? [2m]
8. Why does the author liken the malaria epidemic to be similar to the "Holocaust"? [1m]
Paragraph 2
Recognition of malaria's toll on the global economy is growing. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, estimates that countries hit hardest by the most severe form of malaria have annual economic growth rates 1.3 percentage points lower than those in which malaria is not a serious problem. Sachs points out that the economies of Greece, Portugal and Spain expanded rapidly only after malaria was eradicated in those countries in the 1950s. In other words, fighting malaria is good for business- as many companies with overseas operations have long understood. By the end of this year, Exxon Mobil, which plans to expand activities in the sub-Saharan countries of Chad, Cameroon, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria, hopes to triple its funding for anti-malaria projects and research, from $2 million to $6 million. But the malaria problem is bigger than Exxon Mobil or even Bill and Melinda Gates. Government action is needed.
From Paragraph 2
9. Explain in your own words what the author means by "malaria's toll on the global economy"? [2m]
Paragraph 3
For decades, the best treatment for malaria was an inexpensive medication called chloroquine, first discovered in Germany in 1934 by a researcher working for Bayer. Chloroquine was so effective that it seemed it might vanquish malaria forever. But by the 1970s, the drug had been used so widely to treat all kinds of fevers, not just those caused by malaria, that the malaria parasites became resistant and doctors had to turn to a second medication, called sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, or SP. But within five years, the parasites started to develop resistance to SP as well. Today resistance to both drugs is rampant in many parts of Africa, where resistant malaria parasites are the leading cause of death.
From Paragraph 3
10. Give two reasons why the medication for malaria became ineffective in the 1970s. [2m]
11. Quote a word that has the same meaning as "widely". [1m]
Paragraph 4
At the same time, efforts to control anopheles mosquitoes have been more or less abandoned. Part of the problem was the realisation taht malaria could never be completely eradicated from tropical regions the way it had been in the U.S. and other countries in temperate zones. There was also a growing backlash against DDT, a pesticide that is highly effective at attacking mosquitoes but whose indiscriminate use in agriculture killed many fish, beneficial insects and birds. Although only small amounts of DDT are needed to control malaria - usually in indoor-spraying campaigns - its toxic reputation made cash-strapped governments in Africa, which often must rely heavily on international donors, hesitant to use it.
From Paragraph 4
12. Why do the governments in Africa fear using DDT when it can help them to control malaria? [2m]
Paragraph 5
To be successful, any anti-malaria campaign must do two things: treat the illness and prevent the transmission of parasites. Several pilot studies conducted in Africa have proved that combination therapy, in which at least one of the medications is derived from a plant called Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, easily destroys drug-resistant malarial parasites in the bloodstream. Using several drugs at once, often in the same pill, greatly decreases the risk that the parasites will become resistant. As an added bonus, artemisnin, the active ingredient in Artemisia annua, acts very quickly, further decreasing the chances of drug resistance.
Paragraph 6
The full three-day course of treatment with artemisinin-based combination therapy costs from $1 to $10 a person, depending on whether it is purchased in the public or private sector. Unfortunately, that is at least ten times the price of current, albeit ineffective, treatment programmes. Most impoverished African governments simply cannot afford to foot the entire bill for combination therapy and the training required to give it, and the same holds true for the majority of their private citizens, many of whom already spend a third of their income on malaria treatment.
From Paragraph 6
13. Use another word from paragraph 4 to replace "impoverished". [1m]
From Passages A and B
14. For each of the following words or phrases, give ONE word or short phrase (of not more than seven words) which has the same meaning the word or phrase has in the passage. [5m]
From Passage A
[a] epidermis
[b] proliferate
From Passage B
[c] eradicated
[d] vanquish
[e] indiscriminate
15. In Passage A, the writer describes a mosquito's journey in taking the life of a child. [25m]
Using your own words as far as possible, summarise how a bite from a malaria-carrying mosquito affects the internal functions of a human body.
USE THE MATERIAL IN PASSAGE A FROM PARAGRAPH 3 ONWARDS.
Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be more than 150 words (excluding the words given to help you begin).
Begin your summary as follows:
After feeding on human blood, the Anopheles mosquito oils the bite area with her saliva which contains...
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